New Mexico Governor Wants to Boost Tech Innovation

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has issued a series of proposals to boost innovation and high-tech companies in New Mexico. Among other things, she wants to encourage angel investors by raising the maximum individual investment threshold for the state’s Angel Investment Credit from $100,000 to $250,000 and increase the overall cap on the credit from $750,000 to $2 million. The proposal is not only meant to encourage larger investments, but to increase the number of investments angels can make.

Martinez also proposed:

Combining the Technology Jobs Tax Credit with the relatively unused Research and Development Small Business Tax Credit, including allocating $2 million to the Technology Research Collaborative to fund projects with commercial potential from partnerships between researchers at New Mexico’s laboratories, universities and the private sector.

Investing $7.5 million in a reformed Higher Education Endowment Fund to help attract more top researchers and professors to state institutions in order to train a stronger high-tech workforce.

Make funding for the Job Training Incentive Program (JTIP) permanent to provide further certainty to small business job creators and innovators. Funding so far has varied by legislative session.

“This session, we must take decisive steps to expand the pipeline of innovation in New Mexico, and then improve our tax treatment of those innovation activities once they occur,” Martinez said.

Neighboring Texas has been overwhelming other states in its ability to lure companies and jobs to the state with the taxpayer-financed Texas Enterprise Fund, which has handed out more than $508 million in incentives.